


Requiescat

by AutumnHobbit



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock BBC
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Kidnapping, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, Sherlock ponders life and it's meaning, Though I really hope this doesn't happen, season 4 speculation, so you know this is serious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 02:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnHobbit/pseuds/AutumnHobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moriarty makes the first move. And Sherlock is stunned by the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiescat

**Author's Note:**

> I obviously do not own any of these characters. 
> 
> I really, REALLY hope this doesn't happen in series 4. But I'm writing it, anyway. 
> 
> If you really want to cry, listen to Nocturne by Anne Takle whilst reading this.
> 
> Please feel free to review. :)

His brain was in a haze, barely able to realize the touch of cold concrete on his knees. Everything was spinning, like digits, numbers and coordiantes in his head. Impossible to read. Incomprehensible.

Having one of the most powerful, advanced minds in the world had its downsides.

Sherlock had, in the times he was bored, or distracted, or even though he hated to admit it, just _fearful,_ pondered it. Wondering. Calculating. What his first move would be.

 

Never in a million years had he thought it would be this.

***

He knew something was wrong the moment he stepped into the lab.

 

It was empty.

 

Molly’s schedule was working Monday-Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. It was 3:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday.

He practically ran out of the place, making his way back to Baker Street. A cold rain had started once he was outside. He sprinted up the steps, bursting in the door.

Just as he screeched to a stop in the living room, his phone rang.

Feeling a knot of dread inside him, he lifted it and glanced at the glowing screen, seeming almost iridescent in the darkness of the room.

_I’ve left you a little present. Enjoy. Jim Moriarty xxx_

A photo of a lily, soaked in red liquid, was attached.

***

_There had been a vase of lilies at the hospital._

He knew they were Molly's without even reading the card. Her favorite flower, simple but elegant. So she thought to share them.

While he appreciated the gesture, he himself had no special attraction to flowers, or to their symbolism. But he did find it odd that she hadn't been to see him. He supposed she might have been; his sleeping habits were rather erratic due to the drugs and his own exhaustion, and John had said she'd been  at the hospital as soon as she'd heard and had stayed until surgery was over, but never when he was awake. 

 _She's avoiding me,_ he realized.

The thought hurt. Even though she wouldn't abandon him, she was still vexed over the drugs. Of course, there was more to it than she knew...but he still felt guilty. 

_Will I never stop hurting the people I care for?_

He rolled over, cringing slightly from pain, and drew the dull white sheets around his shoulders, curling on his side. He would tell her later. His only escape from pain was sleep.

He refused to use the morphine drip anymore. 

***

The lily was both a taunt and a clue. It had taken no time at all to find pollen left over in the lab, tracing it’s origin. Moriarty hadn’t even bothered to make it hard.

Maybe because he knew that he didn’t need to.

Lestrade had gotten plenty of reinforcements. Sherlock knew that they didn’t need them. He had already called in a favor from Raz, who had made sure the location was accurate.

He leapt out of the squad car when they got to the house. It was a decrepit, ancient brownstone, in a run-down section of the city. Raz waited outside, gesturing to the door.

It was padlocked.

He pulled the crowbar from the back of the squad car, raising it over his head and bringing it down forcefully.

The lock snapped. He shoved inside and sprinted upstairs.

He knew what he would find.

Molly lay, battered, bruised, and bleeding, in a bed. She was covered with white sheets, eerily like the ones the corpses in the lab were sheltered by, easily showing the red stains soaking through. She wasn’t just lying there, either. She was tied, firmly, cruelly down on her side with industrial rope.

He dropped to his knees beside the bed, hearing her wheezes, and yanked a knife from his coat, cutting the cords with a vengeance while calling down to John to get the paramedics. It took a moment to get through the knots, but when he did she rolled off and into his arms. He turned her as gently as he could, cupping her face with his hands. “Molly?”

***

"It was brave, what you did," she said quietly.

It was a rainy evening at St. Barts, and he and Molly had been sharing the lab; content to work in silence, cooperating, almost as it had been for so long, before John came.

Sherlock didn't regret meeting his best friend. Far from it. But sometimes he missed when it had just been the two of them.

He sighed. "I suppose I'm never going to stop taking the fall, as it were. Much to John's chagrin."

They went on working for a moment before Molly spoke again. "Really, Sherlock. If you ever do need to talk to me..."

He sighed again, noting that it was becoming a habit. "I've told you it was for the case. It was. And Molly, I can't keep doing this...pushing everything on top of you and all of my friends."

_I already feel guilty enough for putting you all in danger._

"And what if I want to help?" Molly asked.

He smiled as he looked through the microscope. "Goodness, Molly, don't you think you've helped enough already?"

When there wasn't an answer right away, he glanced up. He only got a glance of Molly's tear-stained face and a swish of her hair as the door gently swung closed behind her. He winced. He had meant it in jest, but it seemed she'd taken it the wrong way.

 _Women,_ he thought sarcastically, before he slammed the lid on the thought. Once, he might've allowed that philosophy to rule him. But Molly had made him see how he made other people feel, and he didn't want to harm others if he could help it.

_Or are you really just doing it for her?_

That night, he stood outside her flat in the dark and the rain. He was hesitating, trying to decide whether to knock, to apologize, to explain what he'd meant. But all her windows were dark, and the street was as quiet as a tomb. 

She must've already gone to bed, then. He turned his coat collar up and turned away, walking off through the gloom, and trying to figure out why he suddenly felt so desolate.

***

Her lashes fluttered against her pale cheeks. She glanced up at him, eyes glazed over. Her lips moved, ever so slightly.

_It’s alright._

She reached a trembling hand up to his face, gently tracing the moisture from it. He choked slightly, unable to talk, except to murmur “I’m sorry,” over and over and over.

He heard the footsteps running up the stairs. He also heard her gurgling, and the hiss of leaky steam pipes. Her hand slid down his chest. Her lashes slid closed. The door slammed open.

Silence.

He sat there, numb, staring at her body as he held her.

A knife, with a lilly wrapped around the hilt, was driven into her chest.

***

_I don’t count._

Why had she ever said that? Didn’t she know? But then, he himself didn’t. He hadn’t realized it before. But her presence was an integral part of his work. Of his life.

From how she had always been there, shy but willing to help. Her own intuition and observational skills. Her soft smile. Her own deductions, always startlingly accurate.

 

How would he ever go back to St. Barts?

 

_The one person he thought didn’t matter at all to me was the one person that mattered the most._

Apparently his nemesis had rectified that situation.

 

He stood, stiffly, staring as the paramedics slid a blanket over her face. Loaded her into the back of the ambulance. The growl of the engine as it started, pulled away with no lights, no siren.

A hand placed a blanket around his shoulders. He felt a ring on the third finger. John. An assaulting shade of the color orange glowed in his vision. John patted his shoulder, then walked over to join Lestrade.

He himself stayed, staring up at the sky. The clouds had left, curse them, and the night was clear, cold, and crystalline, with stars sparkling across the heavens. But he searched through his database, sifting wildly through information and latitudes and longitudes. It couldn’t be normal. Something had to have changed. Things couldn’t be this beautiful, this serene, not when Molly was...was....

He barely felt it when his knees collided with the concrete. He fell against the brick wall, sliding down and punching it, over and over until his knuckles bled.

His phone vibrated. He pulled it from his pocket, his blood dripping on the screen as he read the text.

_I have missed our little game, darling. xxx_

He threw it into the wall with all his might, a grim smile crossing his face at the crash and the glass raining down to the ground.

***

He wished the game was over.

 

He wished it had never begun.

 

He wished he hadn’t been so blind, so careless. Not even noticing what he did to these people he cared for...even...even _loved._

Not even noticing what he did to others, people whose names he didn’t even know.

 

So _this_ was what she had meant. What John had felt, in those years he was alone. Now he wished he could fall on his knees, begging them all for forgiveness, even though logically he knew it would not undo all the hurt, all the pain.

Even though it had to be done.

 

The headstone was white marble. It looked attractive, shining in the winter sun.

But it wasn’t _enough._

 

Looking at that stone, no one could see. No one could _know_ just who Molly Hooper really was. The pathologist. The one who made him, the most observant human on the planet, actually _see_ people. The one who helped.

The one who _counted._

_Molly._

Now, standing alone in the cold wind, among the souls, he stood in a black suit, his curls constantly crossing into his vision as they danced in the breeze.

 

How could he himself describe Molly? So simple, but so complex, so quiet, but so observant, so small and shy, but so strong and brave.

Molly was the ultimate variable. But she was more than a number. She was a person. And he wondered why it had taken him until now to see that this was what she had been trying to show him all along.

 

He puzzled for a long while on what to leave her. It had to be something fitting, for her help. For her friendship. For just being _her_.

 

He had worried and confused Mrs. Hudson, as he dug through the many books along the shelves, pulling the ones he didn’t want off and throwing them carelessly behind him. He had finally found the book Mummy had given him so many years ago, when he was small. The one about flowers.

He had decided he never wanted to see lillies again.

 

He stepped up to the grave and laid the deep cerulean flower onto it. The passge in the book had shown the iris. A symbol of faith, wisdom, cherished friendship, valor. Hope.

 

He pressed his lips very gently to the stone. “Goodbye, Molly Hooper.” he said softly. He stood, and walked away silently, praying, for the first time in so long, that the world he had dreamed of when he was small, before he had become hard and distant, the world that his grandmother had told him people went to if they had lived a good life, would accept her into it’s kingdom.

_What do you need?_

_You._


End file.
